Tag Archive: Samsung Bixby

Samsung said on Tuesday it will be bringing Bixby, its virtual assistant, to India later this month, as the company announced the availability of the Galaxy Note 8 smartphone. The arrival of Bixby in India further intensifies the battle for AI-powered digital assistants Google’s Assistant, Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, and Amazon’s Alexa, which is also set to be launched in the country later this year.

The South Korean electronics company, which assumes the tentpole position among smartphone makers by both volume and brand value, said it had put months of rigorous efforts at its Research and Development centres in Bengaluru to understand and adapt to Indian dialects and contexts. Samsung says it has thoroughly baked in support for various Indian accents, letting even those customers who have opted for English (US) language, make use of Bixby.

Bixby, which was launched across several US and European markets earlier this year, offers four essential features to customers – the ability to talk to Bixby, take pictures and let it make sense of it, use it to set reminders, and receive recommendations for products, foods, and things to read.

Samsung said Bixby will be available to customers in India from September 30. Bixby, unlike Siri and Google’s Assistant, doesn’t work with a wide-range of smartphones. At present, only the Galaxy S8, Galaxy S8+, and the Galaxy Note 8 offer this functionality. Samsung-made Android smartphones, however, also support Google Assistant, Microsoft Cortana, and Amazon Alexa, should users desire to utilise them.

The limited target audience for Bixby might emerge as a roadblock in its growth. Apple has shown some commitment to improve Siri’s reachability in India, adding diction support for a handful of local languages including Hindi. iOS 11, the latest mobile operating system from Apple that is expected to roll out later this month, will introduce that support.

In the meantime, Amazon is planning to bring Alexa with the Echo Dot smart-speaker in India later this year, people familiar with the matter said.

Earlier this month, Samsung was reported to be making an Amazon Echo competitor, but a fresh report seems to refute those claims. A new report now claims that Samsung feels that competitors in the market like Amazon Echo are way ahead in the game, and the tech giant wants to still indulge in the waiting game before launching a product in the smart speaker space. Korean site The Korea Herald reports that Samsung is not so enthusiastic about the smart speaker market as of now, and is not looking to launch one anytime soon.

“Samsung currently does not view Al speakers as marketable, as the global market is already dominated by unbeatable Amazon and the Korean market is too small to make profits. More importantly, Samsung cannot afford to focus on the uncertain market, as most of its AI specialists — whose number is much less than that of the US tech giants — are currently going all out to develop the Bixby version in English,” an anonymous source told the publication.

Amazon Echo currently enjoys 70 percent of the market share in smart speakers, with Google Home market share on the rise. The Korean market, where Samsung has dominance, also has SK Telecom’s NUGU which is quite famous already. Samsung, presumably, prefers to wait it out and see how the market for smart speakers shapes up before taking the plunge.

Also, its Bixby AI’s English version, which was delayed for months due to several technical glitches, has finally been released for Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ users in the US. It still needs to be rolled out in other markets where the smartphones have been made available. All of this suggests that Samsung would be making a smart move by not venturing into smart speakers for now, given how advanced Alexa and Google Assistant are.

In any case, Samsung has confirmed that Bixby is arriving on the Family Hub 2.0 smart fridge, indicating that it’s not completely ruling out the AI assistant’s integration in its smart products line after all.